Opinion: The Letters Top Five
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Each week, your letters maven receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the good old U.S. postal service, and even a few faxes here and there.
After she cuts out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems,) she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, from which she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.
Last week The Times received 777 usable letters, 628 of which were in our Top Five Topics:
- Presidential election: 408 letters, responding to Times stories about the final presidential debate, the polarized electorate and more (most Joe the Plumber letters will go in next week’s tally);
- Gay marriage: 87 letters;
- Economy: 80 letters, as stock market gyrations continued;
- ‘Religulous’ and atheism: 33 letters, reacting to this Op-Ed and this Gregory Rodriguez column about Bill Maher’s documentary ‘Religulous’ and atheists; and
- Rail safety and funding: 20 letters, reacting to this Op-Ed calling for the end of Metrolink and other Times stories about rail transport and mass transit.